With a recently demolished school and a church that was slated to be razed, the city of Pittsfield held a historic preservation summit Thursday. The conversations centered around repurposing abandoned landmarks.In September, Cafua Management, a leading Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee, pulled back on plans to demolish St. Mary the Morningstar Church on Tyler St. in Pittsfield. The reversal came after public outcry over the potential razing of the Morningside community landmark. Earlier this year, Cafua demolished the former Plunkett School in downtown Pittsfield, where it planned a drive-thru. With these recent events in mind, the city decided to try and get ahead of the curve on any future destruction of historic buildings. The citizens who spoke out against St. Mary’s slated demolition have formed an ad hoc committee called the Friends of St. Mary’s. Committee historian Dianne DiNicola listened in on the panel conversation which included Mayor Dan Bianchi.
“St. Mary is the star of Morningside like the name of the church,” DiNicola said. “I think it’s worth preserving.”
“It is,” Bianchi agreed. “But you have to find a way to do it.”
“That’s why our committee is here,” DiNicola answered. “We want to help you.”
“I love the idea of a committee and the idea of brainstorming,” Bianchi said. “I think it’s really a matter of reaching out to people who you think might be able to tackle something like this or maybe put a number of groups together.”
Among the panelists was Joe Durwin of the Springside Park Conservancy. Through clean-up efforts and hours of brainstorming, the citizen-driven group has made the abandoned Springside House, once used by the city, a center of attention for reuse receiving state grants to study renovation. Durwin says for preservation to succeed efforts need to continue beyond signing a petition and speaking out against a particular demolition.
“The real change is often made by volunteers willing to do week to week, slow, grueling committee work and to send countless emails and to get people out to hearings,” said Durwin.
Ian Rash of Allegrone joined the panel. In 2010, the company purchased The Howard Building, a former hardware and agricultural supply store built in 1916 in downtown Pittsfield. Retail space and 14 market-rate housing units will be completed in the coming weeks.
“It cost us about $5 million to go through that whole project,” Rash said. “It would probably cost us $12 million or more to build a building of that quality, with those kinds of historic details; the moldings, the glasswork [and] the mosaic tiles. You can never replicate it. So any historic building, I think, is worth saving and there’s an economic value. Maybe it takes a little bit of time to achieve that value, but it’s there.”
Its living units were filled in six days. The discussion also touched on what resources are available around historic preservation for interested parties. Aside from federal and state grants, the Berkshire Athenaeum and the city of Pittsfield have detailed histories of city buildings. City Planner CJ Hoss says the city is taking on a lengthy land use and zoning analysis of the West Side and Morningside areas.
“Takes on evaluating the building stock that’s there, the zoning that’s in place and what things we could put in place to at least encourage the development and redevelopment we want to see moving forward as a city and the quality that we expect,” said Hoss.
Other ideas included setting up a countywide historical preservation group, strengthening the city’s historical commission and adopting the Community Preservation Act directing tax levies for preservation. The meeting was held in Shire City Sanctuary, the former Notre Dame Church. Crispina Ffrench and her husband bought the building to house a clothing manufacturing business, but now it’s utilized as an artist makerspace.
“There is certainly a need for enough to have all the churches in Pittsfield turn into different and diverse types of makerspaces,” Ffrench said. “Hopefully we will be a real role model and people will be able to use us a reference and a model to follow.”
